Asante wins UAA title in 55 meters, Norton claims 5K

Feb 27, 2011

CHICAGO, Ill. – The Brandeis University track and field teams had a pair of individual champions and seven other All-Association performances this weekend at the 2011 University Athletic Association Indoor Track and Field championships held at the University of Chicago. Both the Brandeis men and women's squads finished in sixth place, with the women scoring 39 points and the men tallying 35.

The Judges' two Association championships came on the men's side in the shortest and longest races of the weekend. In the 55-meter dash, rookie Vincent Asante (Bronx, N.Y./High School for Arts, Inquiry and Imagination) matched his season-best time in both the preliminaries and in the finals, running 6.55 seconds. Asante won the finals by 0.11 second. He is still just one-hundredth shy of the school record in the 55 and seven-hundredths short of an NCAA provisional mark. Asante is just the second Brandeis runner to win the 55-meter dash at the UAAs, joining Sunil Srinivasta '91, who won the 1988 and 1991 titles. Asante also took home a second All-UAA honor by placing third in the 200-meter dash with a time of 22.84 seconds, good for third place.

Senior Paul Norton (Amherst, Mass./Amherst Regional) was the Judges' other champion in the 5,000-meter run. Norton won the event with a time of 14:51.37, just over two seconds ahead of the second-place finisher. Norton's time was an NCAA provisional qualifier, though it didn't improve on his previous-best time of the season. This was his second career UAA indoor championship, having captured the 3,000-meter run in 2010. Norton was also the runner-up in the 5K as a sophomore and as a junior, when he won UAA Runner of the Meet honors.

On the men's side, there was one other All-Association performance, in the distance medley relay, where the quartet of senior Devon Holgate (Cumberland, R.I./Cumberland), sophomore Brian Foley (Foxborough, Mass./Foxborough), junior Marc Boutin (Westford, Mass./Westford Acad.) and junior Chris Brown (Chelmsford, Mass./Chelmsford) placed third with a time of 10:17.83.

Also scoring points for the Judges were sophomore Mik Kern (Groton, N.Y./Groton), who placed sixth in the 800-meter run with a time of 1:57.70, a season-best, and rookie Ed Colvin (Roslindale, Mass./Central Catholic School), who was sixth in the 3,000-meter run in 8:49.92.